More on CEO Apologies

October 25, 2008

More on CEO Apologies

I was on Good Morning America (CEOs Refuse to Apologize) yesterday talking about CEO apologies of which we have seen little of late. This interview was a follow-up to the CEO apologies article by Del Jones in USA Today this week that I posted on my blog. Just thought I would alert you. The most interesting part was that several women in my office seem to blow dry their hair at about the time it aired – 7:45am. Some women told me they were startled to see me and turned down the hair blower volume to hear what I had to say. A guy I know also wrote me so he may have been blow drying his hair too.GMA had an interesting angle since they were commenting on the absence of an apology from former federal reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. Weber Shandwick’s research found that 58% of the blame for a crisis belongs to the CEO. I bet if the study was done today, the figure would be closer to 75% and same goes for government officials.

The absence of CEO and government official apologies has become deafening.

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Leslie Gaines-Ross

lesliegainesross@gmail.com

As Weber Shandwick’s Chief Reputation Strategist, I focus on the ever changing world of reputation. For the past 25 years, I have relentlessly observed, researched and commented on the rise and fall of reputations.

1Comment

You are right. Perhaps in future CEOs might be more modest when things improve? For sure, they placed huge pressure on PRs to get them coverage as personal brands during the good times. Now they won’t take any blame for what’s happened. Next time around we should push back.